A couple of years ago, BBC presenter Louis Theroux made an appeal on Twitter for Scientologists to reach out to him for the new film he was making about the church. We couldn't help rolling our eyes at the time, wondering if Theroux knew what he was getting himself into. But his method was sound. He wanted to come at the story with an entirely fresh start. He asked Scientology for access, and he genuinely wanted to hear from Scientologists about their organization.

Early in My Scientology Movie, the film he premiered last night at the London Film Festival, Theroux says that he relished the idea of being the first journalist who would find something positive to say about Scientology. If you know his excellent body of work, you know that such a counter-intuitive take is just like Theroux. And of course he's right — it really would have been remarkable if he'd been able to pull that off.